Selected Teachings of Swami Vivekananda

 My ideal, indeed, can be put into a few words, and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.

 Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.

 We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.

 So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.

 Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.

 If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, … and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need.

 Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.

 The older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new Gospel.

 Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success, and above all, love.

 Religion is realization; not talk, not doctrine, nor theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes.

 Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man.

 Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call uon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.

 They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.

 This is the gist of all worship – to be pure and to do good to others.

 It is love and love alone that I preach, and I base my teaching on the great Vedantic truth of the sameness and omnipresence of the Soul of the Universe.

 Source:http://www.belurmath.org/swamivivekananda.htm

 

 

Saluting Unsung warriors of Present India

Vande Mataram!

These words come naturally, on the lips of a patriotic Indian person. Today, living by words is a big challenge for everybody, and that's the reason people have become quite choosy in uttering even good things.

Freedom of speech and decision making should be important to all Indians in our quest for developing a better India.An incident happened today early morning which I thought I should share for the reason being to salute the unsung hero.

16th August 2011 early morning 4 am , Kurkhumbh rail crossing, on NH9.I was coming by my car from Solapur towards Pune and found the rail crossing gate open and to my surprise all vehicles standing  on both sides of the crossing. The train driver was blowing the horn continuously in order to convey the message the somebody stand up and close the rail crossing to avoid any accident.Yes, I mean it.

And infact the other side of the story is the rail crossing guard was asleep( must have been fulltoo celebrating the anniversary of India's freedom.). Probably the Goods train driver noticed the rail gate being open from quite a distance and stopped just before the crossing.And to convey the message that somebody please close the gate he started blowing the train horn.

And then couple of village guys ran and woke up the rail guard and gate was finally closed.

I must salute the train driver that he saved quite a number of lives today. One might speculate that he might be already moving slowly on the track and hence could stop.It might be true, however the fact remains that he was alert( not drunk) and he showed tremendous amount of responsibility and and a great attitude towards society by preventing another rail accident.

I think Indian railways should felicitate this person for his alertness, acting as a responsible citizen and preventing another fatal rail accident.

Mamta didi are you listen!

May GOD give us all the strength to accept our mistakes and stand up to the challenges of everyday!